Obama pressures Afghan leader

By ALISSA J. RUBIN and HELENE COOPER The New York Times

Monday

Mar 29, 2010 at 12:01 AM

President Barack Obama personally delivered a pointed criticism to President Hamid Karzai in a face-to-face meeting Sunday, flying here for an unannounced visit that reflected growing vexation with Karzai while America's military commitment to defeat the Taliban insurgency has deepened.

Obama's visit, which had been shrouded in secrecy and lasted only a few hours but included a boisterous pep rally to American troops, was the first trip by him as president to the site of an 8-year-old war he has stamped as his own.

While Obama said "the American people are encouraged by the progress that has been made," as he stood beside Karzai at the heavily fortified presidential palace, Obama also emphasized that work remained to be done on the governance issues that have frustrated U.S. officials over the past year. "We also want to continue to make progress on the civilian process," Obama said. He mentioned several areas, including anti-corruption and the rule of law.

The trip highlighted how far the administration believes the Afghan government has to go to make good on promises that Karzai has made on governance and even reintegration with certain reconcilable members of the Taliban insurgency.

The language used by Obama and Karzai in their private discussions was not disclosed. But Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, told reporters on Air Force One en route to Afghanistan that the administration wanted Karzai to "understand that in his second term, there are certain things that have not been paid attention to, almost since day one." Jones said that the Afghan president "needs to be seized with how important" the issue of corruption, in particular, is for U.S. officials.

The visit capped a high-profile week for Obama, in which he achieved a singular victory domestically -- signing health care legislation -- and reached an arms control agreement with Russia that calls for the two nuclear powers to reduce their nuclear arsenals to the lowest levels in half a century.

Obama's visit to Afghanistan came against a backdrop of tension between Karzai and the Americans that has not substantially abated since Karzai was declared the winner of an election tainted by fraud. In the wake of the election, the Americans, the United Nations and other NATO countries demanded that Karzai make major overhauls in the electoral system, tacitly indicating that they might withhold money for the next election if they did not see changes.

Karzai recently overhauled the election complaint commission, but made it less neutral by arrogating to himself the right to appoint all five members. Currently three of the members are appointed by the United Nations. The move infuriated some Western diplomats here who saw it as almost a taunt.

Further compounding Karzai's grievances was the conference in London at the end of January at which corruption was one of the major topics, and Western officials again made clear that they felt Karzai had fallen short. Recently, he has strengthened the anti-corruption commission, and the attorney general appears to be moving forward on a handful of high-profile cases involving former government figures, but corruption remains pervasive, and Karzai has not used his position as a bully pulpit to change the culture.

"He's slipping away from the West," said a senior European diplomat in Kabul.

Karzai warmly received one of America's most vocal adversaries, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on an official visit to Kabul in early March and met with him again this past weekend in Tehran when the two celebrated the Afghan and Iranian new year together.

Karzai returned to Kabul only hours before Obama landed.

Last week, Karzai made a three-day trip to China, a country that is making economic investments in Afghanistan, notably its copper reserves, taking advantage of the hard-won and expensive security efforts of the United States and other Western nations.

Air Force One landed at nighttime at Bagram Air Base after a 13-hour nonstop flight for a visit kept secret for security, and Obama quickly boarded a helicopter for the trip to Kabul.

White House officials did not give advance notice of the trip, and even went as far as informing reporters that Obama would be spending the weekend at Camp David with his family. In fact, the president's trip occurred during the Afghan night, and he was flying back to Washington before most Afghans awakened Monday morning.

Besides Jones, Obama was accompanied by Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, and a number of other officials from the White House and the Defense Department.

Obama also met with some of the tens of thousands of U.S. troops who have been sent to Afghanistan since he took office. His visit with the troops is particularly significant because U.S. combat casualties in Afghanistan have risen sharply while he has been commander in chief.

In the first three months of 2010, at least 83 U.S. personnel have died in Afghanistan, versus 43 in the first three months of 2009, according to icasualties.org, a database of casualties in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

The number of soldiers wounded in combat has also spiked dramatically. Military officials have warned that casualties are likely to continue to rise sharply while the Pentagon completes the deployment of 30,000 additional troops under the strategy that Obama announced in November. The reason for the spike, military officials said, is that U.S. forces are aggressively seeking out Taliban insurgents in the country's population centers, and are planning a major operation in Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban, in coming months.

At Bagram Air Base, Obama told the cheering troops that he had no doubt they would be successful in their efforts to stop the Taliban from regaining power.

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